The last option. (Slavery)

 Old story! Wrote it when I was 16 years old so bare with it and the errors!

Copyright © 2011 Evita

All rights reserved.

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Evita.

The last option.

 

They came in the dark night. From the moment I heard the painful screams from my friends, even my family, everything turned into a big blur. Strong hands took its hold on me, dragged me away from all I have ever known in my life. I became exhausted and treated like an animal, I became a slave.

From the moment we were taken from our land, nothing in my life was the same anymore. It was no longer what I thought it would contain. Where were the love and the safety? My family was nowhere to be seen, I was deeply afraid all the time, and I had to fight for something as simple as food!

Every minute and second that passed I would beg my ancestors to hear me, and that they would help us. Because, the white people weren't like us, they were bad and they needed to be stopped.

It was impossible to understand these white people, they treated us poorly and like we weren't people, to them we were filthy animals. Even though not even an animal should be treated the way they treated us. They showed no mercy, like a sly crocodile, and did not hesitate to kill those who did not take the white people orders.

Although we realized fast that to survive whatever we had gotten into, we needed to keep a low profile. Talking back and trash in their grip was like asking them to punish us, mostly the punishment was getting whipped uncountable times. Just that killed those who were too weak and hadn't managed to get any food in a long time.

We were taken in on a boat, not like those we use in the rivers along our village. These were massive! Over hundreds of souls were kept captive there, so many that in the mass of people I lost my own people.

By huge and white, almost cloud looking things; we got forward on the sea in a lightning speed. The first weeks were horrible, no space to move on, strangers pushing me into every direction and the smell that was created by us all, it was unbearable.

The worst thing was that it was absolutely no one to hold me and just tell me that everything would be fine. Everything my father and mother had taught me these few years I had lived, were forgotten now.

My mother's strict voice telling me to have respect for the elders was now like a faint whisper in the wind. My father's advice how to survive did now seem foolish; they had taught me the wrong things in life. I had never been prepared for this, this was beyond my imagination.

I kept to myself, all alone trembling in the farthest corner of the room. The safest thing was to blend in, trying not to outstand from the mass, because it would just lead to something bad.

My poor family was unfortunately not that lucky. If just my mother had had a strong enough voice to calm down my father. I had thought my eyes were betraying me when I saw them the first time since we were captured. Somehow my parents and two off my siblings had managed to keep together.

The happiness of seeing them overflowed by a sense of security and knowing that they were well, was soon replaced with horror when I saw my father trying to fight a white man hands off him.

Curses flowed freely out of his mouth. Every second ticking away seemed like hours, and with eyes wide open I watched the white man kill my father in cold blood.  

Emptiness was the only feeling I could describe at that moment. It filled me to the brink and did not let any other feelings take their hold. My biggest concern didn't go to my father who lay in a pond of his own blood, but to my mother and siblings, that now had no one to protect them.

I was old enough to take care of myself. My mother was on her way with a child, and with my siblings on her mind she was an easy prey for any danger this journey could foresee.

Out of nowhere I was pushed by someone behind me, a strict order was given to me and I moved like if I had been whipped. Directed away from the people I love the most made me feel great dread, and that was the last time I remember seeing them, ever.

Days passed by, turning into months. I was looking awful, just skin and bones, almost like a sickly skeleton. By each day that passed I became more depressed, death seemed so appealing. Hadn't it been for my father's eyes, those cold and dead eyes that had stared into nothing, I surly would have given up far by now. For the first time in my life I couldn't remember last time I had felt love, or gotten it from anybody.

Thinking about that gave me a strange feeling deep inside of my body, I suddenly felt so numb. As if my limbs had been cut off and I had to lift my arms up in the air, just to be sure I was still alive. It didn't work, I was too numb and sleepiness was taking over my body. It washed over me like an uncontrolled tsunami, drowning me slowly. 

Was that how you feel before you die? Should I panic, or should I be happy that it all was over?

Loud and angry voices from the white men was being heard, cry's from innocent people responded. I chose the last option.